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Stuck on a rock in a hard place
Nov. 10th, 2024 11:07 amAs I cannot go off to sea despite it being the damp drizzly November of the soul (actual November has been drought conditions), and as I could not for tourism-revenue-related purposes knock anybody’s hat off in the streets at any time in the past six weeks or so, I instead indulged my current boat mania by getting David Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder to read on my writing retreat.
This book tells the tale of Her Majesty’s Ship the Wager, which sailed out of England as part of a fleet of ships on a secret mission to intercept a Spanish treasure galleon as part of the imperial misadventure hilariously named the War of Jenkins’ Ear. The hilarity pretty much ends there, though, since the War of Jenkins’ Ear was very stupid and turned out badly for pretty much everyone involved until it drew to an embarrassing stalemate after a couple of years. Some of the folks that it turned out badly for were the crews of the seven ships that sailed under the command of George Anson to try to nab this treasure galleon, which was sailing out of the Pacific side of South America. This meant that the fleet first had to get over there from the Atlantic side, a feat which at the time–this being the 1740s, before the construction of the Panama Canal and well before climate change reliably opened up the Northwest Passage to Arctic cruise ships and Stan Rogers fans–could only be accomplished by sailing around the bottom of South America, through the Cape Horn/Tierra del Fuego area, which are some of the roughest seas in the world.
Basically everything that could go wrong here went wrong, starting with delays in getting the ships up and running and a shortage of fit sailors with any experience at all. By the time they reached the Cape a bunch of guys had already died either of scurvy, accidents, or being really old guys who had been ignominiously hauled out of retirement. Two of the ships fell behind and turned back to the Atlantic; the rest pressed on, during which HMS the Wager–already on its second or third captain by this point–also fell behind, but pressed on. This did not go well for it, and it ended up stuck between two rocks right off a mountainous little blob of land now named Wager Island. Thus commenced several months of hardscrabble survivalism and nasty political infighting, in which the newly minted Captain Cheap tried his best to maintain order and imperial naval discipline, to little success. Fun interludes include a visit by some of the area’s nomadic natives, who helped out the half-dead sailors for a little bit until some of the more poorly behaved ones drove them off. Eventually some of the more resourceful mariners concocted a plan to enlarge a longboat until it was big enough that they could escape on it. This plan was received as enthusiastically as anyone could muster, but conflict arose again between the Captain, who wanted to try to sail west and complete the mission, and nearly everyone else, who wanted to head back to the Atlantic and try to rejoin civilization at the neutral Rio Grande. This situation eventually escalated into a full-blown mutiny, and the bulk of the sailors took the longboat and went east, leaving the Captain and a few loyalists on Wager Island, where they started building their own boat to go west in. This did not work and eventually they had to also be rescued by natives, who guided them up to mainland Chile where they were arrested by Spaniards and eventually sent back home. A third group of folks, who had left with the original bulk of mutineers and then stranded on a beach partway up Argentina, also eventually made their way home (or some of them did), where the various groups of people promptly got into an eighteenth-century flame war in the press, publishing various accounts of their journey and trying to convince the public that the other factions were to blame for various episodes embarrassing to imperial pride and the delusional self-image of the British as very nice gentlemen who are more civilized than everybody else. The Admiralty held a half-hearted court martial, in which it was determined that it wasn’t Captain Cheap’s fault that the ship was wrecked and then everyone was sent home to write more best-selling books about their versions of what happened.
David Grann tells this wild ride of a story with a lot of panache, writing with sympathy for all the humans involved and none at all for the imperial powers writ large, providing lots of vivid detail and excerpts from first-hand accounts by the handful of folks who carefully kept logbooks and diaries throughout the ordeal–including John Byron, teenage midshipman and grandfather of the future Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. There is some context/commentary about English imperialism which is pretty solid and provides some interesting framing about how and why these real-life “adventures” went down compared to the way the British public understood the romantic tales of sea life. As a landlubber who is sort of susceptible to the “romantic tales of sea adventures” drama and a certified grizzled male hardship enjoyer (thanks to whoever on Tumblr came up with that one), I always love that Bilbo Baggins “oh no, I loved reading about adventures but actually being on one sucks!” type of thing, because it makes me feel smart that I know I only like reading about adventures and have no desire to do actual death-defying shenanigans whatsoever. Anyway, these are excellently written and very thrilling death-defying shenanigans, in which death wins very frequently. I highly recommend it if it is a damp drizzly November in your soul too.
This book tells the tale of Her Majesty’s Ship the Wager, which sailed out of England as part of a fleet of ships on a secret mission to intercept a Spanish treasure galleon as part of the imperial misadventure hilariously named the War of Jenkins’ Ear. The hilarity pretty much ends there, though, since the War of Jenkins’ Ear was very stupid and turned out badly for pretty much everyone involved until it drew to an embarrassing stalemate after a couple of years. Some of the folks that it turned out badly for were the crews of the seven ships that sailed under the command of George Anson to try to nab this treasure galleon, which was sailing out of the Pacific side of South America. This meant that the fleet first had to get over there from the Atlantic side, a feat which at the time–this being the 1740s, before the construction of the Panama Canal and well before climate change reliably opened up the Northwest Passage to Arctic cruise ships and Stan Rogers fans–could only be accomplished by sailing around the bottom of South America, through the Cape Horn/Tierra del Fuego area, which are some of the roughest seas in the world.
Basically everything that could go wrong here went wrong, starting with delays in getting the ships up and running and a shortage of fit sailors with any experience at all. By the time they reached the Cape a bunch of guys had already died either of scurvy, accidents, or being really old guys who had been ignominiously hauled out of retirement. Two of the ships fell behind and turned back to the Atlantic; the rest pressed on, during which HMS the Wager–already on its second or third captain by this point–also fell behind, but pressed on. This did not go well for it, and it ended up stuck between two rocks right off a mountainous little blob of land now named Wager Island. Thus commenced several months of hardscrabble survivalism and nasty political infighting, in which the newly minted Captain Cheap tried his best to maintain order and imperial naval discipline, to little success. Fun interludes include a visit by some of the area’s nomadic natives, who helped out the half-dead sailors for a little bit until some of the more poorly behaved ones drove them off. Eventually some of the more resourceful mariners concocted a plan to enlarge a longboat until it was big enough that they could escape on it. This plan was received as enthusiastically as anyone could muster, but conflict arose again between the Captain, who wanted to try to sail west and complete the mission, and nearly everyone else, who wanted to head back to the Atlantic and try to rejoin civilization at the neutral Rio Grande. This situation eventually escalated into a full-blown mutiny, and the bulk of the sailors took the longboat and went east, leaving the Captain and a few loyalists on Wager Island, where they started building their own boat to go west in. This did not work and eventually they had to also be rescued by natives, who guided them up to mainland Chile where they were arrested by Spaniards and eventually sent back home. A third group of folks, who had left with the original bulk of mutineers and then stranded on a beach partway up Argentina, also eventually made their way home (or some of them did), where the various groups of people promptly got into an eighteenth-century flame war in the press, publishing various accounts of their journey and trying to convince the public that the other factions were to blame for various episodes embarrassing to imperial pride and the delusional self-image of the British as very nice gentlemen who are more civilized than everybody else. The Admiralty held a half-hearted court martial, in which it was determined that it wasn’t Captain Cheap’s fault that the ship was wrecked and then everyone was sent home to write more best-selling books about their versions of what happened.
David Grann tells this wild ride of a story with a lot of panache, writing with sympathy for all the humans involved and none at all for the imperial powers writ large, providing lots of vivid detail and excerpts from first-hand accounts by the handful of folks who carefully kept logbooks and diaries throughout the ordeal–including John Byron, teenage midshipman and grandfather of the future Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. There is some context/commentary about English imperialism which is pretty solid and provides some interesting framing about how and why these real-life “adventures” went down compared to the way the British public understood the romantic tales of sea life. As a landlubber who is sort of susceptible to the “romantic tales of sea adventures” drama and a certified grizzled male hardship enjoyer (thanks to whoever on Tumblr came up with that one), I always love that Bilbo Baggins “oh no, I loved reading about adventures but actually being on one sucks!” type of thing, because it makes me feel smart that I know I only like reading about adventures and have no desire to do actual death-defying shenanigans whatsoever. Anyway, these are excellently written and very thrilling death-defying shenanigans, in which death wins very frequently. I highly recommend it if it is a damp drizzly November in your soul too.